Imagine an organization you are a member of because it leaves your motivation to join up to you. Ready?

Now contrast this with a plethora of organizations trying to motivate you, as an employee, as a manager, as a client, as an investor, as a regulator, or what have you. Ready?

The postclassical organization is an organization based primarily on your motivation to join, not on purposes said to be stronger than you, or on reasons said to be wiser than you.

The classical organization was up to purposes, building its very processes and procedures of work on teleological ideas of how to reach ends by what kind of means. The modern organization was up to reasons, building its processes and procedures of work on rational ideas of how to reach ends by what kinds of means. The difference? The difference is that in modern organizations ends and means were meant to be changed as managers and leaders, counting on economic and technical rationality, were pleased to do, depending, of course, on strategy and tactics, on shareholder value, stakeholder interests, and corporate responsibility. Classical institutions like the church, the military, the university, gave way to modern organisations built on formal procedures to accomodate for their means and to change their goals accordingly.

A lasting world, sticky with its own fatigue. But we depend on that when we go to hospitals, to school, to university, to church, to the theatre, to museums, and to work. Or don't we? Is there anything changing?

The simple idea of the postclassical organization is that any society, depending on its prevalent mode of communication, has its favorite type of organization. The classical culture of the literal society had its institutions, complete with offices and their authority. The modern culture of the print society had its organisations, complete with formal hierarchy and rational decision processes. We today still have both, that is for sure. But we have also the postclassical organization of the computer society, complete with its necessary insistence on a flow architecture of work (and leisure), a form architecture of knowledge (and ignorance), and a stream architecture of decision (and non-action).

Are we ready for that? We do not have to ask this. We can watch it happen. And be a part of it.